Food insensitivies and survival

[TarjaS]

What I wrote in the Survival through hunting thread got me thinking once again about the special challenges posed by food insensitivities in survival situations. The question "would you eat" becomes even more difficult, when you have extra consequences to consider. In cases where the consequence is an anaphylactic shock, the answer is simply "no," but how about situations where the consequences are less life-threatening?

This is so complicated a question that I'll just explain my own special considerations as an example. In Finland, the traditional staples of diet are dairy, grains and potatoes. Unfortunately, I cannot eat any of those in normal situations. So, what if something happened that required us to be self-sufficient (as a country, not necessary in a personal level)? I'm thinking here of a total cut of imports and needing to survive with what can be produced locally.

I could eat grains and dairy, but with that would come very uncomfortable immediate symptoms plus, in long-term, an almost certain worsening of an underlying neurological condition I have. So, it's a choice between a lot less food (I expect there would be something I could eat safely) or symptoms that would cause severe decrease of physical abilities and cognitive functions. Go hungry all the time or become a burden to other people? Not very comfortable options.

I suppose in this sort of scenario, if it continued indefinitely, we'd go back to us "faulty" ones dying off from polluting the gene pool.

A short-term scenario is an easier one as I would certainly eat food unsuitable for me and put up with the symptoms for a few weeks, if I knew that surviving that time meant that I would live and could go back to something resembling a normal life. Situations like this would include something like local natural disasters from which you can recover, because there is still an outside world that will come and help you.

[out2lunch]

This is a very emotive subject as after a cataclysm the world overpopulation problem would soon have to right it's self. Who survives and who dies?

In the last 60 years of medical advances we now have a population of more people over the retirement age than under it. 100 years ago this would not have happened.

With overcrowding people are consuming more resources than they actually need. To the world's detriment.

It's not just the wonky ones you refer to that are going to have a hard time, the mental anguish knowing you must not save a relative as they are just to old and their resources are better used on a child are huge.

Grim days ahead when it comes to survival.

[robdoar]

Our bodies are pretty adaptatable, amazing things.

While it's hard to pinpoint what your precice food intolerences are, there are people that have overcome allergies just by careful and consistent exposure to their alleregen.

[TarjaS]

@robdoar, yes, our bodies are amazing and not always in positive ways. My problems stem from a misbehaving autoimmune system and any aggravation will get it to attack parts of my own body as if they were foreign. So status quo is the first priority.

And I just noticed that the title of the thread says "insensitivities" when it should be "sensitivities." Probably thought of intolerance when writing that.

[The Long Bark]

Gluten is a big one.

The interesting thing about gluten intolerance is that the current varieties of wheat that are currently being grown are higher in gluten than was the historical norm. They are selected for because gluten creates a nice fluffy texture for bread products. Hence, why gluten intolerance seems so common.

The thing is that the modern lifestyle is fairly unnatural -- in the sense that most people work rather sedentary jobs and eat crops that have been selected to a specific purpose. There's probably a lot of idiopathic things that get fixed from regular exercise and a balanced diet.

Personally, I'm lactose intolerant, but that's not really a problem with yogurt since the bacteria breaks that up. Lactose is just a disaccharide of glucose and galactose. It's when you can't break that into those two simple sugars that problems occur.

That said, I can eat it in small amounts since it's less a question of whether I can digest it, but how fast I can digest it. So I can drink small amounts of milk in coffee just fine.

[danicusrex]

@robdoar, yes, our bodies are amazing and not always in positive ways. My problems stem from a misbehaving autoimmune system and any aggravation will get it to attack parts of my own body as if they were foreign. So status quo is the first priority.

And I just noticed that the title of the thread says "insensitivities" when it should be "sensitivities." Probably thought of intolerance when writing that.

My girlfriend has a similar issue. She has Crohn's disease, so a lot of foods are completely off the table due to it aggravating her system (red meat being one of the big issues).

On top of that, she is deathly allergic to fish and shellfish. If we got stranded in the woods, we'd be fowl-hunting with GUSTO.